Taking A Step Backwards

There’s a lot of content on Twitter about how awful Twitter is after the Musk takeover.  Some of the more visible mainstream media content about this is focused around the well documented cutting of staff to crippling low levels, antagonizing more or less legitimate advertisers, reinstatement of previously banned right wing extremist accounts, and Musk’s predilection to act on a whim and behave like a hypocrite.

Every once in a while, mostly motivated by boredom, I will search the word “gematria” on Twitter to see if there’s any deeply unserious accounts stirring up trouble. At a quick glance this is one such deeply unserious account:

Whether it is up to no good or just somebody with strange standards of amusement remains to be seen.  I have some experience with these things and have some tricks to further the research along.

Many years ago, out of boredom again, I took on a throwaway quickie project on Facebook.  Like many other people I wondered exactly why I got so many porn style Facebook friend suggestions.  To understand this phenomenon, you can start with a real life example.  You might end up being friends with someone you aren’t really friends with, yet peer pressure or whatever gets you sucked into the circle.  If your girlfriend’s friend is into, say, Mary Kay cosmetics, and you’d never heard of them before, no all of a sudden there is pseudo-advertisement for it just by the association.  Maybe your Mom would like some of that pyramid scheme facial beauty.  You may never even know Mary Kay is a notorious MLM example.

So, at one time Facebook had every single common name covered.  You could count on a network of fake accounts having most or all of these characteristics:

1). Super attractive girl in limited clothing.

2). One of the top most frequent last names (Smith, Brown, Jones, etc…)

3). Common first name

4). A friend list of similar account names.

5). No attention to profile details.  E.g.  Asian woman named Denise Jones living in a census designated area with a population of under 1000 that literally lists occupation as a model miles away from any major metropolitan area.

As for Twitter, one of my go to research tactics is looking at the follower/following lists for the same reasons.  As for my buddy I put the screen grab up, yep we scored some red flags.  A couple of accounts that list more accounts in their profile, all with the same style of name - gibberish (just like the gematria phrases) and the number 69 (sometimes 1969).  A pretty good indicator of a bot network.  Other accounts, Crypto Bros, more gibberish style account names instead of “@DeniseNJ17” or something more believable, etc…  Curiously, there doesn’t seem to be other gematria users.

Back to Facebook - a social misfit male having a cognitive bias of accepting a friend request from a pretty girl without vetting her is understandable.  Now he is by algorithm standards defaulted to crank magnetism advertisement.  Catfishing, pay to view porn sites, and all kinds of other friend of a friend dangerous activity.

One of my research super powers is extreme patience.  I’m more than willing to use some of my idle boredom time to scroll through an entire 1000+ list of followers just to see if there’s something there worth digging deeper into.

So why exactly is this post titled what it is?

Scrolling through the followers doesn’t work like it used to.  Now the most you can see is around 50 of each of the follower and following accounts.

Uh oh.  That can’t be good.  I suppose it’s possible that it is some kind of space savings on the server thing.  But if you are following a legit account with lots of followers, shouldn’t you be allowed to search out like minded people.  Based on Twitter’s 2023 track record on safety and security I doubt this is beneficial to the site.  I’m inclined to think that the 950 followers are always running in the background, generating what promoted ads you get recommended, follower suggestions, bots that auto reply to your posts.

Grifters long ago figured out methods to make things that now in retrospect are easy to say should never have gone viral.  Like the Alex Jones method of stirring up hatred towards an innocent scapegoat.  You just never know what they’ll pick next.  Sure the next pandemic will be declared a hoax.  Sure every politician will be attacked (probably as they should be).  Sure climate change is going to be denied.  Sure a mass shooting will have false accusations of crisis actors.  But the specifics are to be determined.  Just by reviewing the analytics and seeing what gets the most traction.

Now I suppose Elon might be a remarkable and kind genius that is intentionally smoking out unserious accounts, spending his personal fortune to purposefully get at the ring leaders.  Gonna have to go with heavily doubting it.  The one big selling point that concerned him on the purchase of Twitter?  Bots.  He was gonna get rid of the evil bots.  And yet here we are making it easier for them to hide among accounts with big followings.

Another Way Conspiracy Theorists Drive You Crazy

Quite literally driving, as today we're looking at a peculiar phenomenon that I don’t have any solid evidence for why it happens, but I think I have some solid clues.

Videos made while driving.

Now I don’t know how far this extends in to the conspiracy world at large.  I imagine flat earthers don’t like planes much, and they don’t have enough money for plane travel even if they did.  I do know Queen Romana Didulo travels around in a royal RV.  And I do know I’ve seen several gematria mooks start a video by hopping into the car, buckling up (which might be a small victory for normalcy) and talking into the smartphone shooting their big adventure away from Mom and Dad’s basement.

A vehicle is a necessary evil, and the oil companies love it that way.  Additionally, the same way gun ownership is a display of bad assery and a smartphone is a display of keyboard warrior super smartitude, a big ticket item like a car is a display of some kind, be it that you are financially secure or responsible enough to have tested for a license and passed.

There are some advantages to a car as the setting for the video.  It can be a refreshing break for the viewers instead of the YouTuber at his computer screen in a home.  It’s a personal space.   When encountering a rabid conspiracy theorist with a bullhorn on the street corner, a lot of people don’t want to engage.  When there is contact by someone willing to engage in counter arguments it usually doesn’t end well for the conspiracy theorist.  Zach is well practiced and a natural speaker with all his talking points either pre planned or off the cuff old favorites.  New mid level lieutenants are not necessarily equipped to handle a conversation with someone that knows what they are talking about.  The personal space of the car is a shield to keep “the trolls” from interrupting.

Which may be important since sometimes the trolls are family members.  You know, those annoying people that just don’t get why one day you’re dropping zeroes and claiming that this is the way your system works, then the next day you don’t drop the zero because of discernment. The family members that you call sheep at the start of your car rant.  Zach’s radio call in show gets interrupted by trolls a lot.  Please don’t call him while driving, he’s distracted enough already.  Since he claims he doesn’t lie the only possible explanation is multiple personality disorder.

My best guess is that this started with Zach making some in the car videos when he was driving for Uber.  That was a weird not lying time as he was heavily into “I’m making so much money off the casinos on sports, join the thug lifestyle and be rich like me” and simultaneously people wondering why anyone would need a notoriously shitty job like Uber driver.  Then, with gematria going full time and the Uber driving disappearing it became, and a big shocker here -

Fundraising.  You’ve never lived life to the fullest until you’ve read the comments on a video where Zach is driving cross country, whining about how expensive it is and how the community doesn’t support his great work.  From what I’ve seen he doesn’t do a lot of direct requests for funds.  He complains, then all the people with Admin wrenches on the channel do the pumping for donations.  As for the mid level lieutenants that do this?  That’s harder to say.  How about trying to impress the cult leader by emulating them?

I suspect that these out of town drives are something of a fishing expedition.  The same way a newbie buys the $1 book and shows interest, courting them in seeking out a bigger score.  Think of The Sting where the poker game scene was just a hook to reel Robert Shaw into the big con.  Here we have an excuse for a live meeting with a newbie showing signs of being gung ho, making the effort to meet Zach out of town, but closer, for them.  And be subjected to a schpiel of how here’s what you can do to do more for the cause.

I do have an example of this, all very speculative and as happens a lot with these things the marks just quietly slipping  away into the night and don’t want to admit to the con might factor in.  Oklahoma City.

At the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing there was a big push to pay for Zach to drive out there.  All that casino winnings money wasn’t enough for guess.  And during the event where he was making a nuisance of himself, with site security fully aware of who he is and not welcoming him, there ended up being talk of buying a building.

At least two loyal mid level lieutenants have dropped out of the gematria scene after meeting up at Oklahoma City.  One was a long time video maker that Zach had to make a couple of hours side trip away from OKC to meet.  Pretty much just dropped off the face of the earth after that.  Another put on a bit of a show about being anti cabal for a time.  Then after a few anti Zach tweets also slinked off into the night.  These activities match a pattern of waking up to the grift.

The Bias Blindspot

There are many situations of conspiracy theorists being presented with irrefutable proof of being wrong where they simply stick to their guns.  News outlets often call it “doubling down.”  A better term is probably the backfire effect.  Even calling it a fancier name than doubling down will meet with some backfire.  In the world of cognitive biases, there exists what is known as the bias blind spot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot

Where yet again, the mere use of linking Wikipedia will backfire since in general to the critical thinking challenged Wikipedia, Snopes, etc… are an instant turn off.  Oh you used Wikipedia as a source, Eeeewwww!  (Wikipedia is fine, the only problems are the lag time between disingenuous edits and getting it corrected and other such short term issues.  Good faith editors will weed out the nonsense, eventually.)

85% in that study is a very Dunning-Kruger number.  When studies were done asking people to assess their driving skill as a choice of two options between above or below average, 85% say above.  Of course.  Everyone’s brain is telling them they are super cool.  Heaven forbid I admit that I was ever wrong about something.

In the world of wrongness, things such as school shootings, I’m very much on the side of stopping them before it gets to a point of offering up thoughts and prayers.  On a less serious issue, spreading awareness about grifting on the internet is, to my cognitively biased mind, a better solution - stopping people from losing money before they lose their money.

So how does gematria fit into this discussion?  What does it do different than other grift, or better than other grift?

Nurturing being wrong as being OK.  Even the leaders have a track record of being wrong often and simply not caring.  When not picking both teams to win the Super Bowl, the leader of the clique will take a shot on a roughly 50-50 proposition and get it wrong.  The newbie that happened to decode the big game and make a gematria based decision that gets it right gets a fuzzy warm feeling.  And stays interested longer to keep his monthly $10 Patreon donation going.

The bias blind spot is more important on the effect of someone like a parent that would prefer their kid doesn’t steal their credit card info to place a $500 bet on the Super Bowl.  It’s a war between, “How could you be so stupid?” backfiring and the “Attaboy!!” nurturing of the ring leader.  Since the nurturing is far more effective at dumbing it down, which is purposeful, rational based arguments have a huge uphill battle.  Every time Sisyphus makes progress (winning) an excuse will be created to avoid the psychic damage of being wrong (losing).  Thinking you’re right 85% of the time when you are really only right 50% of the time, and you never get the rock up the hill at 100% of the time.

I just read a description of belief in conspiracy theories I rather like.  Think of it as a multi-level marketing scam. The math of these pyramid schemes is doomed to failure. The MLM leaders also operate by delivering attaboys to encourage upward movement to the mid level.

Zach is constantly complaining about how few people actually work to help the community.  Translate community as bottom tier doesn’t get any money.  He has the mid level tier that he spends more time on directly.  They’ve been involved long enough and add value to the pyramid to aid in recruiting bottom tier newbies.  These loyal lieutenants have all the bases covered.  Somebody thinks sports betting is nonsense?  Maybe racist content is what drew them in at the start.  Take your pick, there are lieutenants for sports, homophobia, racism, spirituality, cryptocurrency, anti-law enforcement, synchronicity.  All with the bias blind spots that if the evil empire made this ritual up for their clique, maybe it doesn’t make sense that the same numbers are used in other cliques for a completely different meaning.

Once you start getting courted to move up to the mid tier is the dangerous time.  You’ll constantly be pressured to blog, make videos, go to events, whatever it takes to get you to do the heavy lifting on recruitment of new bottom tier meat.

Do yourself a favor.  Avoid the MLM scam before thoughts and prayers are your only consolation.

A Rabbit Hole Example

A lot of content here is posted with some hesitancy as the forces of disinformation are constantly looking for that big new idea to exploit.  The disinfo researches don’t want to fan the flames too much.  Something that qualifies as a big idea would be posting a lengthy article detailing how you used ChatGPT to write an article on particle physics that blew your high school teacher’s mind.  Maybe, since the AI thing is still fresh, that’s not the greatest idea.

But, since social media is tech based, and there’s a continued refusal to accept that content moderated by inept algorithms isn’t the best idea, there are some things that are old news, aren’t going away and will never go away.

There are some Twitter accounts that simply exist to be wrong about everything just for engagement.  I’ve created a fictitious example, including how disinformation researchers try to limit the damage.  We’re going to start with an image of a dog.  I imagine based on the original caption it’s a real pooch.  It has a distinctive look that is pretty eye catching.

My best guess is that this is some sort of pit bull/Dalmatian mix.  And actually, for all I know this is a fake image, photoshopped to achieve that look.  Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.  Accounts that are looking to be wrong about everything for engagement, have a wide variety of uses for a seemingly innocuous image like this. And they can and will throw out mutually exclusive stories that aren’t compatible just to see what gets some hits.  Examples:

This is a baby hyena

Pro Abortion doctor’s pit bull mauls protesters 

Westminster show crowns new breed as winner

Alien DNA found in Florida dog

Lost service dog:  owner needs help recovering

This is a DALPIT, which equals xxxx in Gematria 

—————————————————————-

With intent, a wide variety from the ludicrous to the somewhat lucid, to check what gets the most engagement.  Then, dropping the least successful stories and focusing on the one that gets the best ratings.  Especially if the ludicrous ones get the best ratings —> the narrative is being driven by cognitively damaged people that think this is really an alien DNA creature.

Also, with intent for engagement the more lucid content is out there, to give the more intellectually inclined a chance to waste time on the counter narrative, as well as the true story about what is actually going on with the dog.

So now, imagine the disinfo researchers are tired of hearing about this bullshit story of alien dog DNA and they find the real story.  Short term, they put the ❌ over the photo to not add fuel to the false narrative.  Such is the world we live in now.

There’s always a significant lag time between social media doing something about fake stories.  (My experience is/has been that Facebook is the worst.). What’s the harm with a silly and stupid story about an obviously fake thing that nobody would actually believe? Well spam bots and grifter accounts can fake a lot of I believe in this activity.  And people are now poking around more dangerous accounts like this one:

This has all the red flags of an account that deserves to be reported.  And the disinfo researcher talking about it trying to get it used now has to heavily redact the content to avoid further damage.

In our fictitious example here, arguing over this dog has generated traffic that purposefully funnels them into the darker content of the internet.  I don’t know exactly what the purpose of that account is, but it’s obviously up to no good.

1). Name is something nobody would pick plus bunch of numbers - a sign that it’s probably a member of a network of bots.

2). Appears to be encouraging stealing money from a list of cryptocurrency wallets.  Including a specific username and password.

3). Created just last month

4). 0 followers, 0 following

5). Randomly retweeting and liking a wide variety of old content that doesn’t have a common theme like a normal person would.  We’re talking even an old tweet from 2020, old.

Do you really want your kids poking around the financial version of revenge porn?  Or hacking and stealing?  Or being funneled to a URL looking to phish for your personal info?  Do you really want the hassle of a monthly fee for a VPN just because you’re too proud to admit that maybe some small effort into understanding and training people on how grifting on the internet works?  Today’s teenager that is willing to believe in alien dog DNA is far more likely to get funneled into the world of, “Hey, I don’t have to pay my traffic ticket, because the King of Scottsdale Arizona said they’re an illegitimate government because they have FUCKING GOOD FRINGE ON THEIR COURTROOM FLAGS!!”

Avoid the lag time.  If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If something sounds too stupid to be true, it probably is.  And it also could have an ulterior motive.

Debate Me, Bro!

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/06/18/vaccine-scientist-peter-hotez-says-he-was-stalked-after-billionaires-and-joe-rogan-urge-him-to-debate-rfk-jr/amp/

So here’s the background.  Daniel walks into the Cobra Kai dojo, looking to see if there’s anyone in learning some of the less brutal aspects of karate.  Like, using it only for defense, awesome philosophical Miyagi one liners and friendly competition under a clearly defined set of rules.  What he gets is a kick to the face and a challenge to a fight to the death, moderated by the top ninja assassin in the world.  “Don’t worry, I’m totalllllly unbiased,” *wink wink*, “claims the ninja.

In all the information I’ve seen about this situation, the aspect of what actually qualifies as a debate is hotly contested, but these are underwhelming on three key missing components of actual debate.

Here’s a list of formal debating rules:

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/debate1.htm

It requires your arguments be backed up by this pesky thing known as facts.  Fail #1, Kennedy’s history is loaded with incorrect information.  Changing his schtick for an actual debate has a probability of about zero.  Second, the debate is to be designed to convince someone new to the information.  An unbiased audience that can be swayed by the content of the arguments presented.  Fail #2, the audience for Rogan’s show is not unbiased.  They are highly skewed towards believing whatever Rogan says.  Because Fail #3 -

There’s no moderator.  Somebody to step in if things get off topic.  Calling Rogan an unbiased moderator is likely calling a ninja assassin a bonsai enthusiast.

Rogan is very good at what he does.  He’s quick, charismatic and entertaining.  But unbiased, no way.  He’s got that Tucker Carlson speak for ratings not facts quality.  

An actual debate would have a predetermined pro and con topic to discuss.  Maybe trim it down from the whole ball of wax (Vaccine Good vs. Vaccine Bad) to something more manageable.  For example, face mask mandates during a pandemic.  Then the sides have prep time to do research, flesh out their thoughts.  Then entering the debate arena keep to just what the topic is about.  Then when Daniel crane kicks the other guy in the face, because Daniel didn’t like that the guy called him a poopy head, the ninja says he’s disqualified instead of, “Wow!  Didn’t expect that from you!  Winner!!!”

He’s never going to see this, but if I had the chance I would tell Hotez to say something like this.

Fine, Joe.  Use your clout to help us find a mutually agreeable unbiased moderator.  You know, they don’t have to know anything about the medical side of vaccinations or stupid science stuff like that.  They just need to understand tactics that are designed to win arguments instead of being right.

The conspiracy grifters love Joe Rogan.  A lot of the content has been deleted by Zach himself or lost to the occasional Google deletion of his 20+ channels that got axed on YouTube.  But at one point Hubbard had campaigned to get his followers to help him get a gig on Rogan’s podcast.  Needless to say, numerology proving anything about a truly debatable topic is nonsense.  He doesn’t want a platform for his ideas, Zach is ever and forever looking for a foothold in any large gathering of cognitively damaged easy to grift from marks.

I’m reminded of another pop culture reference, Monty Python’s argument sketch.  A man up for a good argument has paid for it from an expert, masterfully played by John Cleese who simply contradicts him.  That’s the quality of argument that would result if this Kennedy - Hotez debate came to be.  Fortunately for now he’s been cautious enough about it.

This is a prime example of the anti-science movement where the grifters encourage attacking actual experts to try to level the playing field.  And just like the pigeon chess players they are they’ve declared victory on a debate that hasn’t happened.

Jobs For Gematria Users

**DISCLAIMER**

 

A large part of our misinformation problem is that the type of person attracted to gematria has such a big problem fitting in with society that they have likely become overloaded with a life filled by being told how their views are wrong.  Disenfranchised, impotent by lack of success.  Snarky posts like this are not a good idea to be used in actual conversation with societal misfits.  They will double down - one of the last bastions of their mental citadel being hating being told what to do.  This is for the concerned people with wondering why all of a sudden their loved one is involved in gematria, and incorrectly thinking it’s just a harmless lark.

______________________________________________

In general, a hardcore gematria user has extremely limited sources of gainful employment.  Indeed, the use of gematria is a bold statement that screams out how you don’t believe in evidence, are more than willing to knowingly manufacture the flimsiest excuse for evidence, and are more suited to being a puppet to a cult leader than even remotely approach independent, critical thinking.

So what exactly can you do with your life, other than generate decodes that you think are predicting something that never happens and constantly have to backpedal to rationalize your failures?  Just thinking about a resume and common interview questions is daunting.  Padding the conversation with, “I’m really good at gang stalking and issuing death threats on social media because FREE SPEECH!!!” is not gonna be too productive.  This isn’t necessarily what you might be thinking, what I mean is that someone who’s better than you and/or got into the office before you isn’t going to like the competition.  There’s only room for one queen bee that wants to be adored for how great they are while in reality they are useless.

Maybe you can get a starter job and just see how it goes.  The life of bouncing around between low level jobs instead of an actual career, just to make ends meet is the way to go.  But let’s think bigger for today.  Let’s use those self absorbed lack of empathy qualities alongside your numerology background.  Let’s keep you occupied and buck the general public’s view of you.  You know, the one that lead the thesauruses to list a synonym of gematria user as the defendant.

CRISIS CHASER INSURANCE CLAIM ADJUSTER 

Ambulance chasing lawyering is so passé.  Even with Bill Paxton passing away there’s not much call for storm chasing.  But you do know better than anybody else that every crisis is a hoax.  Wouldn’t it be fun to meet grieving families face to face and tell them their claim is denied?  That fire that ended the lives of two of your children?  Hoax.  Claim denied.  That’s the beauty of the job, you only need a three word vocabulary.  Hoax, claim denied.

INHUMAN RESOURCES

Ohhhhh, pop culture trivia.  Did you know that the actress that plays Flo on the Progressive advertisements had a gig on the Buffy the Vampire spin-off, Angel?  The demonic law firm (not bad person evil, literally demons) has Inhuman Resources, headed by in the future Flo.  Your job is to point out how every single employee is evil.  Again, just like crisis chasing by using gematria everyone is evil.  Super easy.

OFFICIAL TIMEKEEPER

Everything is synchronous - 20 year old events, eclipses from centuries ago, they all mean something today.  Nobody dies by natural causes, that 93 year old celebrity that died of - basically being 93 years old - ritual sacrifice.  25 year old Instagram influencer dies in car accident?  Murdered by the Jesuits.  The whole concept of time is fuzzy for gematria users.  Tell your boss that anything time related is whatever they want it to be.

VINTNER

By golly you people are great at whining.

SIDEKICK HOTLINE

Not Psychic Hotline, sidekick.  You jumped on the coattails of somebody with more influence than you to try to get on the YouTube Influencer path.  Somebody out there needs tips on how to be a sucking-up mindless toady.

SECRET AGENT

Secret Agents are always cool and they have numbers in their name! 

PATREON AUDITOR

They obviously don’t care if there are grifters.  If they get their fee everything’s cool.  Another cushy do nothing job.  The only thing that might break up the tedium is an occasional, “Oh sorry about that law enforcement!  We didn’t know about that!!”

CRYPTOCURRENCY 

Because freaking duh...of course.  Fake money backed by proof of work, a vague concept that doesn’t actually involve any work?  That contributes to climate change which is actually a hoax?!?  Why are you not doing this already?

Discernment - Another Projection Phrase

Following gematria accounts long term - on any social media platform - is EXTREMELY repetitive.  Mind numbingly, boringly extremely repetitive.  This is on purpose since the target audience is constantly shifting.  Eventually after having been suckered into the current fundraiser the current group of marks figure out that they are just being conned and move on.

What that means for today, I allow myself to complain about psychological projection in conspiracy theories again.

So for the umpteenth time, here are the basics.  If you are four years old on the playground or you are a conspiracy theorist on social media acting like a four year old, you may blurt out, “Tommy is fat, ugly and stupid!!”  There might be a general consensus at the school yard (or the comments of Zach’s live stream) that these statements are true.  There may be some degree of objective evidence that these are true.  But don’t forget that the point is really, “I have accused you of these negative qualities, therefore by default I am not fat, ugly or stupid.”  Even though there may be some consensus and objective evidence to that.  Getting in the first shot holds some weight, even though from a logical fallacy standpoint it shouldn’t.

So now, picture Tommy has done his psychological homework, having found out that and he confronts his main accuser with the evidence, “Uh, Nate….actually you’re an inch shorter than me, weigh ten pounds more than me and consistently get lower grades on staying in the lines coloring in pictures than me.”

Nate is left in the unenviable position of needing to reply to maintain his jungle gym cred for getting in the first shot, he’s too young to get a teardrop tattoo next to his eye, and Lisa might not go to the Hokey Pokey sock hop and ice cream social at Applebee’s next weekend without a response.  So maybe, “Yeah, but you’ll always be way uglier than me.”  Always is a long time, so this remains to be seen….

Now this is what linguistic experts who have analyzed these things have officially embedded in the high brow scientific literature as the I'm rubber, you're glue response.  As often happens at the school yard and Applebees, both Tommy and Nate may repeat this several times under the logically fallacious assumption that who now gets in the last word is the winner.  The kinds of arguments you get with no evidence to support your position.

This behavior at a school yard filled with four year olds is expected.  But one would hope that in a conversation between what the official high brow scientific literature calls “grown ass people” would not be resorted to.  Alas, the conspiracy theorist falling for the tactics designed to make them think they are smarter than they really are and getting emotional reactions instead of critical thinking does not operate that way.

So how exactly do you say, “I’m rubber and you’re glue” without saying the exact phrase, coming off like the four year old who is pouting at Applebee’s that he wanted a refill on Mountain Dew that Mom said no to?  One repetitive, overused word has cropped up - discernment.

I personally find discernment to be a perfectly lovely word.  Three syllables, not too short.  Doesn’t pop up in ordinary conversation too much.  Rolls off the tongue nicely.  Just picture John Houseman in The Paper Chase saying it, “You’re paper is worthless, you didn’t use disceeerrrrrnnnment choosing your sources.”  It also starts with D, like my personal favorite word, defenestration.

Based on the way gematria operates, every person that ever lived, is currently alive or ever will live is a member of the evil empire.  Tommy and Nate are now adults grown ass people and they need to upgrade.  When Tommy confronts NATE=13 with the evidence that 13, like Friday the 13th, is an evil number

Yeah, but you didn’t use disceeeeerrrrnment in your decode.

Gematria clowns fight like this all the time as part of the shill game.  Fighting for market share of the grifting pie there’s little choice but to play I’m rubber, your glue since inescapably they are both numerologically evil.

The most common use of discernment is likely to be pumping up the newbie who hasn’t yet been confronted with the statement of how they are by the numbers evil.  It gives the cult leader the opportunity to bolster the newbie ego with a lovely word outside their normal vocabulary.  I will give you the proper translation of using discernment in this conversation:

“Their decode of you being a Jesuit didn’t use discernment.” =

“You’re rubber, they’re glue, can’t I get some funds from you?”

Please stay interested long enough to:

Drop me a subscription to my Patreon, give me a livestream super chat, pay for my traveling expenses to go shout out a bullhorn in a city that doesn’t know my schpiel yet, donate to my bogus charity….

Armchair Quarterbacks In The World of Misinfo

Yeah, like me.  Information here is heavily opinionated, My education, IQ, and most importantly my stance this is presented as a take it or leave it whether you want to get anything out of it without me getting paid for it - is a bit different than a lot of the material.

The prompt that drove me to today’s material, I found a link to an essay on social media, analyzing an old topic:

Does Donald Trump have Narcissistic Personality Disorder?  Now if you go to Twitter even today you can search something like Trump NPD and find lots of recent activity, and of course a lot of old posts.

It’s important for this paragraph to understand I have some considerable experience with the topic, and my own thoughts are muddied by wondering whether it is my own cognitive biases, particularly confirmation bias, lead me to my personal conclusion.  But this is only incidental to the main point.  I believe he does.  I think there’s a long term pattern showing all the signs outlined in the authoritative material from certified psychological analysts.  However, whenever I start to doubt whether I’m allowed to think this way, I remind myself that proving that is impossible, and more importantly, it ultimately doesn’t matter.  At a minimum he acts as a toxic narcissist often enough that as far as somebody being in charge of so many aspects of my life - I would prefer to be living in a cave by myself.

There’s a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on about this.  Amateur psychoanalysts abound even on that Twitter search mentioned above.  You can Google it and find both pro and con, including from certified people with actual degrees weighing in on both sides.  Previous little seems to cover the, “Does it really matter?” angle I mentioned, which may simply be that social media doesn’t generally allow you the space to write a novel length treatise on the subject.

So, how does gematria fit into this?  Am I suggesting that people use gematria to psychoanalyze political leaders?  Of course not.  Gematria lingers in the background giving a voice to armchair quarterbacks who dismiss being wrong.  This is related to the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy.

Both sides have been doing this forever, treating long term viability of countries and the world like a football game.  Instead of “here’s my well thought out arguments, let’s have an honest and open debate about it” we get “I’m not a Democrat” or “I’m not a Republican” as the sun total of evidence.  Gematria and it’s kin of confirmation bias scam thinking is even worse, driving people further into the rabbit hole.  The gematria newbie, getting frustrated with the experts constant misfires internalizes that they are smarter than the experts.  They are the authority and appealing to their own authority.   Beware the phrase, “I did my own research!”

The last I checked on Brother Berg, literally years ago, he was selling gematria readings instead of sports picks.  So yesterday, I also found this guy and this reminded me how gematria is a symptom of biased thinking instead of exclusive to the sports gambling world:

If you had a stranger bump into you on the street and told you to give them $10 to say something vague you can interpret however you want, would you really do it?  Because that’s what he’s selling.  Want more evidence of that?

You can be wildly confident with gematria, because there are no right or wrong answers.  Never before have I seen such a bold and blatant admission of the uselessness of numerology to base your decisions on.  Yet, there are people paying $10 for wrong answers.  Or even worse, people, knowing full well that gematria scamming goes on think that maybe they need themselves a slice of that grifting pie.

I would hope most people are beyond the psychic readings as shown in movie tropes by now.  It’s unlikely that a Nigerian prince email actually works now, but more likely one of the variations of the advanced fee scam (lottery, inheritance, etc….)  I hope that if some lady with an actual crystal ball, large gold earrings and a Romanian accent (faked) sold people a psychic reading that they would recognize that if they cough up the $10 it’s just a lark.  I hope that the gematria variation of the psychic reading scam reaches that point.  “Vell, darlink…give me $10 and I vill give you da wronk information!”

But here we are with everybody being an expert on everything, muddying up the Internet armchair quarterbacking because gullible people are voters, too.  As they should be, and this is your semi-regular reminder that these things are not even close to being new to the 21st century.  Can hardly wait for the 2024 US presidential election.  Should be lots of fun.

Gematria/Numerology Sports Scamming Basics

Well, there must be a fresh crop of new talent out there in the decoding world.  And just in time for the NBA Finals. So let’s take a look at how Zach is sticking to his old bread and butter, the sports betting scam.

Slightly different now, his blog has a butt load of password locked content.  All his recent NBA finals content is password protected like this, presumably to keep the trolls (aka people pointing out how terrible his content is) don’t troll him.

This magical secret knowledge that will save the world from the powers that shouldn’t be is not easily available.  I imagine there is better content on the Patreon, it makes ALLLLL kinds of sense that if you want the right answers, you need to pay for it.  But, he does share things that make their way to social media.

Challenge accepted, trolling begins now.

1)  The 8 is strong.  What the hell?!!?  Not even a two digit number?  That’s just plain ducking lazy.  Try to watch an NBA game where an 8 or two or a dozen doesn’t show up.  But surely, since the 8 is strong it will lead us to irrefutable proof how is destined to win the game and…

2)  Well that didn’t last long.  The old staple of someone making a fake prediction.  “On the other side…”.  Picking both teams again.  The only thing more common than an 8 showing up in an NBA game is Zach picking both teams.  It ruins your winning percent.  You may not take a goose egg, but it kind of leaves you at 50%.  Like, mathematically always 50%, 100% of the time.  You have really low standards if you’re information is from a source that makes it a no lose situation.  You just gotta convince the actual sheep that your picking both teams was a genuine only picked one team prediction.

3)  So there’s a couple of other numbers, let’s see if that separates the winner from the loser so 56… “It could also be a sign…”  Fuuuuuccckkk!!  Manipulating a perfectly good three digit number into a two digit number and it still picks both teams!  And what a waste, and how sad and embarrassing for that 263 - 2+6=8, it probably though the total points scored was gonna be 263, too.  But instead of a significant event that might open up some eyes, it gets thrown into the meat grinder, trimmed down to two digits, and is STILL 50% wrong.

4)  At least that 30 is a solid one team only indicator.  And that might mean something, except of course it’s got a chance of being dead wrong.  We’ll put that on hold to check in on the next game(s) in Denver.

5)  But as for that game.  Congrats to the Winners!  The usual cult leader ‘attaboy’.  Everybody that made a pick for the game gets an attaboy since you had to pick one team or the other.

If you’ve woken up to the picking both team things and stopped losing money on this, congratulations!  Attaboy!  You’re the real winner!!

The Slow Burn

There’s an old story about putting a frog in boiling water, which for full disclosure is not about preparing dinner.  Oddly enough, I was thinking about this post several days ago which now has coincidental tie ins. Or maybe not, the Organic Matrix might be fiddling with the settings just to mess with my mind.

But anyway:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Our unlucky test subject recognizes that if immediately dropped into dangerously hot water, it’s a holy shit, this is dangerous moment.  If the temperature is raised slowly, the frog has more time to reflect on his situation, waiting until it’s so uncomfortable that it finally jumps out or succumbs since it waited too long.  The story in the most common format is that the frog…croaks.  Neglecting the part about how frogs in reality don’t like excess heat and would jump out long before death.

Part of the mix in what makes gematria/misinfo/disinfo/conspiracy content so dangerous is the deliberate attempt to target a younger generation that hasn’t had enough life experiences necessary to process that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Some would call this grooming, although thanks to our old friend psychological projection, this almost always means the evil leftists are making our children LGBTQ+.  Coincidence #1 - Alex Jones talking about chemicals turning frogs gay.  Hmmmm…

As for a slow burn that goes unnoticed, climate change is a classic example.  I had already figured out in high school that the fossil fuel industry was not being entirely truthful about the long term consequences.  Lying to make money today is far easier than actually caring about events a century down the road when one has croaked.  A seminal moment in my anti-conspiracy activity occurred when some jackass used the logical fallacy of claiming my comments had no importance since, “there are megachurches raking in billions”.  To try to dumb this down - apparently two wrongs make a right.

Coincidence #2 - Pat Robertson died yesterday.  It’s up to greater minds than mine to decide if his life benefited society or if he was just a high profile grifter.

What I do know is that grifting on the Internet  is a new slow burn bullet point.  Success stories create coattail riders that think, even if they are fully aware it’s morally questionable, that grabbing a slice of the grifting pie is the way to go.  Social media reaction has been lip service to try to satisfy getting government off their back long enough to keep raking in the $$.  Where climate change impacts the quality of life or worst case scenario our existence, rampant grifting on the Internet affects our quality of life economically.  There simply aren’t enough resources to keep an eye on all the shady activity.  Somewhere between a 2am illegal left turn with no signal with nobody around for miles, and plowing your car through a holiday parade killing several people is a vague line where it’s ok to ignore the offense and it’s finally time to do something about it.

Effective grifting requires some kind of exit plan.  Probably before losing a billion dollar lawsuit or getting thrown in jail for sedition.  And the easiest exit plan is to choose not to be involved in the first place.  Just like we are immune to alien takeover since humans make shitty slaves, people in general do not enjoy being ripped off.

Currently we seem to be in a phase where while there’s still far more money in hatred, there’s also far more content related to awareness of the Internet grift problem than ten years ago.  The slow burn of gematria and conspiracy thinking developed into Alex Jones, Qanon, -48, Queen Romana, and for now seems to be combatted on the other side by non-monetized people with a moral compass.  There’s a reference point out there on how these groups and individuals don’t work out long term.  They rely on the “stop or I’ll say stop again” attitude of those claiming to manage the offensive content.  They feed off that, relying on the lag time between the first entry in the pot of water and when it starts to boil.

Hans Gruber claimed to have an exit plan of enjoying the fruits of his one big heist on a sunny tropical beach.  Enjoy your moment in the sun now, sports grifters, nobody really cares about the petty theft.  Just don’t push it until you create too many John McClane’s and you get involved in something that saying, “I’m sorry” isn’t good enough.

AI vs. Gematria

Gematria is like a multiple choice test in school where all the answers are wrong, and before receiving the failing grade everyone gets to argue that, "At least I wasn't dumb enough to pick 'C'!!" 

 When I was in high school computers were still infants compared to today’s field where everyone has a phone with vastly more computing power than what NASA lunar landing vehicles had.  It was a glorious time when people did what computing was made for instead of serious analysis about astrophysics - GAMES.

I literally started off with punched tape loading of the program.  A huge pain in the ass since the machine that punched the tape screwed up often enough that one tiny dot punched incorrectly made an entire yards long tape unusable since you ended up with LOOP being read as POOP while inputting, etc….  But we did have a 3D tic tax toe game.  Which was far enough advanced to learn from mistakes.  The first few games would be a cakewalk for the humans, and play long enough it would get to the point where human victory was virtually impossible.

Here’s the Wikipedia article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_tic-tac-toe

And pay attention to the part about how mathematical analysis proves that the first player always wins, but the method is too complicated for most people to memorize.  That’s kinda important to the story.

There’s a very silly game you might have heard of called chess.  I’ve been witness to the chess computers rise over decades.  To summarize as quickly as possible, based on human games over many centuries it is suspected that perfectly played chess would either be a win for white, or a draw.  With no chance for black to win.  The first move is that important, even with a game as complex as chess.

The first computers including my Fidelity Electronics were expensive, and not that good compared to humans with knowledge of chess things like pawn structures, taking the initiative at the cost of material and long term positional compensation.  Eventually top grandmasters would still win, but arguably having had the machine put up stiff resistance.  Strategy of playing against a computer program revolved around how they were extremely materialistic, always grabbing that pawn or rook versus minor piece exchange regardless of the consequences.

Fast forward to AlphaZero and Leela.  These are based on a neural network.  And like our almost 50 year old 3D tic tac toe game, learned.  Instead of playing against humans they learned by playing a butt ton of games against themselves.  For a pop culture reference to make an analogy- the computer in Wargames playing tic tac toe against itself to learn that nuclear war was a terrible idea.

The practical applications of neural net learning are something like feeding a large amount of complex data and the net has a huge reference library to better and more quickly make an evaluation than traditional more human reliant methods.  “You dumbass human, that’s colon cancer, not gassy flatulence from lactose intolerance.”

But every great new toy has the downside of meeting up with the crowd that is materialistic about grabbing that pawn that’s available now without regards to the long term consequences.  So we get deep fakes of bogus Putin speeches, ChatGPT creating fictional legal references and social media algorithms that do a terrible job at moderating content.

The early chess computers had different levels based on how long the machine was “thinking” about the position.  And at the higher levels there really wasn’t much difference relative to humans as they would waste a lot of time deciding between multiple wrong answers.  Now the neural nets are so advanced it’s literally impossible for human victory.  They have a reference library of so many wrong answers they know what doesn’t work.  Moves that in a human game would still work since humans, with their clock running can’t weave through the consequences of how their position will collapse five moves down the road.

Somebody like Alex Jones and the big names in the gematria community rely heavily on dumbing it down to appeal to the basic instinctive reactions.  They operate in a world that wants you to play the chess computer in the 1970’s at level one where you win the game by grabbing that pawn.  They want you to think that choosing among multiple wrong answers is OK, or even good.  Take Ivermectin for you flatulence, it will do wonders for your colon cancer you didn’t know you have.

This is the way the crank/grift magnetism operates.  Multiple wrong answers are constantly presented with an enormous amount of resources wasted on them.  Some players have the program set on a higher level; some arguments are more lucid than others.  If you want to impress me, search for the answer you would get from the neural net instead of downgrading the level of your computer until you get the answer you want to hear.

The reason Douglas Adams’ 42 gag is so memorable is because it’s the gematria response to an exceptionally difficult question.  Now people think that if they get laughed at for the wrong answer of 42, if they upgrade it to a three digit number they are now magically super smart, when they really are just lost in the rabbit hole of multiple wrong answers.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Already

There’s a big corporation looking to fill a position.  Due to budget cuts there’s only room for one candidate for this 200k a year salary job. After looking over resumes, the CEO settles into three different candidates, a mathematician, an engineer and an accountant.

The receptionist ushers the mathematician in, and the CEO asks him the single question that comprises the entire interview.

“What is 2+ 2?”

Dumbstruck, the mathematician blurts out, “Well ducking, DUH!  4.”

Thanking him the CEO calls the receptionist for the engineer’s turn.

“What’s 2+2?”

The engineer pulls out a slide rule, fiddles around with it for a minute or so, then responds.

“I can’t be sure, but after adjusting for tolerable deviations I’m confident it’s somewhere between 3.999 and 4.001.”

Then it’s the accountants turn.  The receptionist leaves the room and the question is posed.

“What’s 2+2?”

The accountant locks the door, closes the blinds, checks the lampshades, desk, curtains, etc… looking for listening devices, then says,

“What do you WANT it to be equal to?”

The receptionist is called back and the CEO, with gleeful delight tells her, “Prepare a new hire packet!  This accountant is our new team member!!”

Knowing what the interview question was, and what the salary that would be, and what a less than honest accountant was likely to say, the receptionist pipes up.

“Not so fast boss.  I think you should consider me for a promotion instead.  I’m a gematria user, and I get my information from grifters and attention whores on the Internet.  The correct answer is,”

“What do you want it to be equal to…TODAY!?”

Ecstatic, the CEO realizes how much money he’s about to save.

“Cancel the new hire paperwork, you’ve got the job!  I never knew you had this gematria gift!  Also, adjust your paperwork to reflect your new salary!”

“Thanks boss, now are you sure we can’t up it to 250k a year since I’m such a bargain?”

“On the contrary, my dear, I know just how to compensate you with what you want most.  Today is the first day of getting what you really want most! - - -

ATTAGIRL!!”